Wednesday, August 20, 2014

Fitness May Boost Kids' Brainpower

Study found fitter kids had different white matter, which helps brain regions communicate with each other

Exercise and brainpower in children may not seem closely
related, but a small new study hints that fitness may supercharge kids'
minds.

The finding doesn't prove that fitness
actually makes children smarter, but it provides support for the idea,
the researchers said.

"Our
work suggests that aerobically fit and physically fit children have
improved brain health and superior cognitive [thinking] skills than
their less-fit peers," said study author Laura Chaddock-Heyman, a
postdoctoral researcher with the department of psychology at the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "Hopefully, these findings
will reinforce the importance of aerobic fitness during development and
lead to additional physical activity opportunities in and out of the
school environment."

The researchers launched their
study to gain more insight into the connections between fitness and the
brain in children. Other research has connected higher levels of fitness
to better attention, memory and academic skills, Chaddock-Heyman said.

And
two recent studies found that fit kids are more likely to have better
language skills and to do better on standardized tests for math and
reading.

But there are still mysteries. While
moderate exercise boosts brainpower for a few hours -- making it a good
idea to work out before a test -- it's not clear how fitness affects the
brain in the long term, said Bonita Marks, director of the Exercise
Science Teaching Lab at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
"The chronic impact is less certain and, for health, really the key for
future research and health management," she added.

The
new study didn't examine any thinking skills, but instead looked only
at the brain's "white matter," which helps different brain regions
communicate with each other. The researchers scanned the brains of 24
kids aged 9 and 10, and found that white matter was different in the
fitter kids, potentially a sign of better-connected brains.

It's
hard to know for sure. Megan Herting, a postdoctoral fellow with the
division of research on Children, Youth, and Families at Children's
Hospital of Los Angeles, pointed out that the kids with lower fitness
levels also weighed more, "so it is unclear if it is actually fitness or
'fatness' that may be affecting the brain. "Studies show that
individuals with obesity have different brains compared to their
healthier-weight peers," she said.

As for the
stereotype of the 99-pound weakling nerd, Herting suggested it may be
time for a rethink. "These findings do challenge that if you are
aerobically fit, you are likely to be dumb. In fact, from an
evolutionary perspective, we were made to move. So rather than fitness
being 'good' for the brain and cognition, it is feasible that being
sedentary may be 'bad.'"

The researchers are now
working on a study that assigns some kids to take part in exercise
programs to see what happens to their brains over time when compared to
other kids, Chaddock-Heyman said.